I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.

All those authors there, most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side, that's the prose side, that's the fishing and miscellaneous behind me. You get an affection for books that you've enjoyed.

I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century.

Landscape is my religion. ...God in a green legend, I lean over the pool In a testament of leaves. I dangle my twinkling mood Before me in a cool cave roofed with branches And floored with a skin of water.

I just didn't want to shoot other people.

All I write about is what's happened to me and to people I know, and the better I know them, the more likely they are to be written about.

I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out.